This article from 2022 does a very good job of capturing the social media landscape and the condition of political discourse right now. It highlights one thing that I’ve been hearing a lot and agree with, the cruelty is the point.
Don’t ever stop talking to each other. It’s what the internet is really and truly for. Talk to each other and listen to each other. But don’t ever stop connecting.
Love this line. I’m so sick of and disillusioned with social media filled with ads, hate, and more ads; it’s good to remember that there are still people that want to talk and to seek out places to do that. What a prescient article, thanks for sharing!
Beautiful article, perfectly articulates my feelings on this. Maybe Lemmy and the rest of the Fediverse can help us break the cycle.
Yeah. This cycle of advertisers infiltrating social media has to end.
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It’s like, people only do things because they get paid. And that’s just really sad.
I would disagree with the common assertion that that applies to everyone, but most people yeah.
Problem is, those that don’t care about money and power usually don’t accumulate those things and have little impact on discourse around them, leaving those who only care about money and power to grasp and maintain control over services that are important to shaping societal narratives: news, social media, politics (through lobbying), etc…
If someone with less shallow motivations does accumulate wealth and power it becomes a struggle to remain humble and not be influenced by said money and power.
No easy solutions here.
Edit: Changed wording for clarity
Sorry, I was making a Wayne’s World joke.
Seriously, thanks so much for posting that. Every now and again it’s reassuring to hear someone put into words exactly what I fail to articulate. And so well articulated, too.
The fact that this was written before the enshittening of reddit really adds weight to the arguments within. I sigh and chef-kiss at the same time, if you can visualise that.
I’ve read this article some time this week, don’t remember in what instance it was posted now. But it really is excellent and describes what is happening to Reddit before it happened. It’s a long read but I encourage it!
That was a long wordy read, but definitely some interesting observations. I’ve been on the internet since its inception so I’ve seen it all. In fact the author is talking about teething on the internet in the AOL days, but I even predate that starting with local BBS systems over a 1200 baud modem (if anyone is old enough to remember those days).
My BBS provided my first internet connection using the initial release of Netscape Navigator, at a whopping bandwidth of 2.4kbps. A photo would come up line by line. You had to have patience then, but it was so new we didn’t know any better.
Anyway I’ve always felt the institutionalization of things wrecks them. Not just with the internet, but with other hobbies and interests for me as well. It’s pretty much the way world works, realize an idea, popularize it, monetize it, destroy it. It’s a vicious cycle, but there’s no avoiding it in our profit driven society.
Social media has definitely fallen by the wayside of monetization. Maybe FOSS and the Fediverse can avoid that fate. I think it can at least for much longer than the capitalized ventures preceding it.
This was an absolutely wonderful read, thank you so much for sharing
Well said, and so true!
Every time I see this reposted I smile. It’s so well written and perfectly sums up my feelings on the internet.
Oh my this blog post has staying power. I read it, fortunately for me, about when I joined the fediverse, and it really set the tone and affirmed so much about what this whole thing is about.
And again and again, it comes up in my feeds as someone discovers it again.
I think this attitude is so worth having. Like the world can be a better place, we’ve seen what a better world looks like in little pockets before people slowly come in and ruin it, but we can get it back.
